Saveing texture samples on a material.

passerby

hello i got a pretty complex brick shader going in UDK, and am trying to figure out what is more expensive right now, adding a whole new greyscale texture to use as a heightmap for my vertex paint and bump offset or taking my mask texture which i used to mask my grout, and 2 different set of bricks for adding variation too them.

i figured out a way too add my 3 channel mask texture up into something that can be used as a heightmap by both the bump offset and my texture blending.



but am not sure if that is more expensive than just adding a other texture or putting the heightmap in the alpha of my mask.

an other upside of this is being able to tweak the heightmap intensity to some extent.

Oniram

id say just put the heightmap in your alpha.

Perfect_Rolemodel

I think each r,g,b, vector is 8 bit total of 24 bit. With alpha another 8 bit = 32 bit total. I heard it's best to add any mask/grayscale map to your alpha which only adds one more 8 bit instead of making another 24 bit texture. Also not sure if this is correct but if you set the compression in photoshop to 8 bit grayscale and import to udk compressed as tc_grayscale or something like, it will be 8 bit only? Can't remember.